I never considered Dr Pepper as a person because they made a big deal about how it doesn’t have a period in the name, like an actual doctor title would. So it’s always just been a brand name to me.
But I’m a bit neurotic about nitpicky details like that.
I served in the US Air Force for 20 years. Ever since I was 18, AF was always the abbreviation for Air Force.
So when “AF” suddenly entered the common lingo as “as fuck,” it really threw me and my coworkers for a loop. Suddenly, everyone seemed to be talking about the Air Force, but the context didn’t make any sense at all! It took a while before we learned that it meant something totally different.
… And then we felt old and out of touch.
The common lingo originated from the movie The Matrix, where Neo was given the choice of taking the red pill and waking up in the real world, or taking the blue pill and staying in the fake fantasy that was his life.
4chan adopted the term and started calling themselves “redpilled,” claiming that they were removed from the happy fantasy promoted in popular culture (wife, kids, decent job, etc.) and could see life for the harsh, cruel reality it truly was.
The mindset spread to Reddit where a community popped up (r/theRedPill), espousing sexual strategies for men in a society where they felt sex was highly unattainable for their gender. It turned into a very misogynistic subreddit, hating on women who “could get laid anytime” and didn’t respect the plight of men who struggled for simple affection from the opposite gender.
Being “redpilled” took on a negative connotation, turning into a darker, conservative term to support men’s struggles in life while at the same putting down women. Its original meaning has been corrupted into a warped idealism for men. One could argue it’s promoting the opposite of its origin; fighting to create a fantasy world for men to flourish without effort instead of introducing them to the reality that their struggles are all self-inflicted and needed hard work, patience, and determination to overcome.
The term became well enough recognized that “_____-pilled” started introducing other concepts of being introduced to harsh truths in the world. In this case, blackpilled, meaning to give in to despair and depression in an uncaring, cruel world.
The US owns a bunch of Caribbean “territories” that they still won’t make into US states. Their citizens are US citizens, but can’t vote.
EDIT: The current US itself was carved out of territories owned by Mexico, France, and England (which took them from Native American tribes). Back in the day, we conquered and stole a bunch of land, both from natives and from other invading countries.
But we’ve been more interested in foreign politics since WWII and less about expanding our own land. Besides, why own a bunch of foreign soil when we can just set up outposts around the globe and have a military frontline anywhere? I served in the US military and we have so many bases scattered around every region of the globe. We can literally involve ourselves in any global conflict we want to within a day or two. Meanwhile, our actual homeland is isolated on the other side of the planet, where it’s difficult for foreign invaders to touch us.
Women are so cute and adorable and I love you too baby girl 😘💋❣️
Yes, it even popped up emojis at the end there, then got stuck looping on the same 3 emojis.
And no, that’s not how I text women. My wife would kill me if I called her “baby girl.” She doesn’t like infantilizing speech; says it sounds creepy to be called a baby, even in the context of cutesy romantic lingo.
Breast augmentation is one of the more common cosmetic surgeries in the military. I actually knew someone who had hers reduced in size because they were too big and interfering with her life. Plus, wearing heavy flak vests with armor plating is painful if you have boobs, and next-to-impossible if they’re massive.
I also had another coworker who got implants because she said her flat chest was affecting her mental health, self-image, and confidence. Now she’s one of the more confident and outgoing people I know in the military.
The most common surgery, actually, was LASIK/PRK eye surgery. For most of my career, it was considered a cosmetic surgery. The military defined “cosmetic surgery” as any unnecessary surgery a member elected to have done. You didn’t need to fix your eyesight, because the military would issue you glasses. So it was cosmetic.
However, in the last handful of years I was in, someone successfully argued that getting your eyes corrected would improve your effectiveness at work, and thus was a benefit to the military, not just the member. Plus, they started allowing people to become pilots if they had the PRK surgery. (You need perfect vision to be a pilot, and eye surgery used to ban you from the job.) So eye surgery is no longer a cosmetic surgery.
The “Work/Government Issued” one make me laugh because I served in the US military, and a handful of years ago, they approved gender reassignment surgery for trans people.
You’re allowed to receive one “cosmetic” surgery for free while serving in the US military, and this counted for that. So you could literally be “issued” a new gender by the government, for free.
Trump became president, and while military people were signing up for gender reassignment surgery, he randomly ordered that trans people weren’t allowed in the military and had to be kicked out immediately. So a bunch of people who outed themselves to take advantage of the surgery suddenly were at risk of losing their jobs.
Fortunately, the Department of Defense put a hold on those orders and managed to talk Trump out of kicking people out for being trans. But I guarantee, if he becomes president again, he’s not going to be talked out of it again.
They do that with Legacy IPs because most people say well I bought the first one I wouldn’t be a real fan if I didn’t buy the next one.
I hate how accurate this is. However, it can also hurt them because there have been many franchises I’ve refused to buy because I never played the first games and I don’t want to jump into the middle of a story I’m unfamiliar with. I’m a bit of a completionist like that.
I wonder if this is why a lot of games are no longer numbering their new releases and just giving them unique titles. So people don’t think of them as a series and are more willing to buy the latest releases.
On a related topic, I HATE how Call of Duty just made a totally new game and called it Modem Warfare, then started up a new franchise with MWII, MWII, etc. We already had Modern Warfare 1-3! It’s like they’re trying to erase/overwrite their old franchise so when people look them up, they just find the latest games. Very sneaky!
EDIT:
If I could develop a game where customers get nothing and you are required to pay them money. It would be the top funded game by every AAA publisher. Remember the people at the top and especially the shareholders don’t care about games.
This is where microtransactions and DLC (like useless character/weapon skins) come from. The customer gets practically nothing, but they pay the company so much money for it. There are tons of games that thrive on this model (especially mobile games) because selling microtransactions and extra downloadable content that’s just a recoloring of a skin makes way more money than just selling the base game.
Doesn’t matter where you start; like the old-fashioned food pyramid, the whole chart lists everything you need to be healthy and well-rounded in life, with the larger-sized portions indicating that you need more of it.
When I was a child, my mother had to travel to Kentucky for work and I told everyone who asked that she was at “Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
My dad pointed out where Kentucky was on the map, and I almost immediately saw the chef and pan in the state shapes. I’ve never forgotten where Kentucky was since then.
Electricity still needs a specifically built medium to pass through before it can form a consciousness, though. You can’t just send electricity through a tree and expect the tree to suddenly become conscious. Electricity is just a key ingredient of consciousness, not the full picture.
Bodies have neutral pathways that allow electricity to simulate consciousness if regulated properly. Same with computers and circuitry.
Way back in my senior year of high school (around 2002), we had a debate project where everyone partnered up, picked a controversial topic, picked a side of the topic, and then researched and advocated for their side to the rest of the class, including a Q&A at the end, where the class could challenge their position.
To our surprise, the two hottest girls in our class picked prostitution as their topic, and advocated for it to be legalized. The teacher was also surprised, and curious enough to let them present their topic to the class.
We all thought they were joking with their topic, to get a rise out of all the horny boys. After all, as 17/18 year olds, our experience with prostitution came from movies or TV documentaries, where it was generally shown as a disgusting and degrading act; the last resort for a woman down on her luck.
But the girls’ presentation was incredibly well researched, with figures regarding the number of deaths, violent crime, drugs, and human trafficking involved in illegal prostitution, compared to Nevada’s legalized prostitution since the 1970s, which had practically no numbers to report.
They even did a deep dive into a brothel in Nevada, where the women were paid very well and treated kindly and fair and not like they’re just a piece of meat. Plus, they had regular checkups and practically free health care because of their profession. They even walked through the various services they provided, since some people (they serviced anyone, not just men) wanted other forms of intimacy instead of just sex. It was a safe and judgment-free environment, on both sides of the table, and the women employed there actually wanted to do the job, with the option to quit anytime. Unlike illegal prostitution, which removed the woman’s autonomy over her own body and placed her in dangerous situations, exposed to violence and drugs to barely make a living.
In the end, the girls did a fantastic job on their presentation and convinced a whole class of seniors that prostitution could be an honest and respectable position, and should be legalized. I’ve never looked at it the same way since.
Oh damn, I’m starting on the Boomer habit of complaining about Zoomer culture when it’s actually Alpha culture.
It feels like yesterday, Boomers were complaining about how annoying millennial kids were, when we were actually adults in our 20s/30s at the time. I’m just realizing that was over a decade ago, and now I’m doing the same thing to Zoomers. Someone please stop time before I get any older; I want to get off.
Had to guess on the boomerang. I’ve seen boomerangs but didn’t know that’s what they’re called nor have I ever posted one.
I’ve never heard of a “boomerang” that wasn’t referring to the Australian tool/toy. I totally guessed on that one too. I don’t post videos to any social media platform, so I was totally out of the loop on that one.
Skibidi toilet? As a 39-yr old millennial, I’m aware that was a thing like a year ago, but I assumed it was a Zoomer meme or something. I can’t get past that captcha.
EDIT: Upon looking at it again, I see it just wants me to type in “what is skibidi toilet” into Google, not answer what it is. Ugh, I’m turning into my Silent Generation/Boomer parents.
It’s my first name and a single syllable of my last name. This is my standard user account that all my family and friends know, so if they want to find me online, they know what to look for.
I used to do private user accounts so I could post things that I didn’t want people in my life to find, but then I realized I just didn’t care to use them. I stay true to myself, even online. Anything I post is what I would happily share with anyone in my life anyway, so there’s no reason for me to maintain multiple accounts anymore.
Also, I’m retired now, so it’s not like I need to watch what I say online. I don’t have to fear my boss finding less-than-professional social media content I’ve posted. My friends are all still working and they get really nervous about broadcasting our chats, like when I’m trying to stream our gaming sessions on Twitch. They sometimes vent about their work, and they’re afraid of their employer finding it. (BTW, I don’t record our game sessions.)
One friend in particular will ditch our game nights completely if I mention it’s going to be livestreamed. I live halfway across the country from him and I don’t even know his employer, but he’s paranoid they’ll somehow stumble across my Twitch stream and recognize his voice or something. I’m lucky if I get 2 viewers all night long, so I’m pretty sure he’s safe.
In the US, pensions have almost completely gone away, in favor of 401K programs. A pension is (typically) a monthly fixed income given by your former employer for the rest of your life upon retiring from a career.
The 401K program is more like a retirement savings account; you contribute a portion of your paycheck toward it each month and your employer will match your contribution up to a certain pre-designated amount. Whatever money is in that account becomes your own personal “pension” that you live off of after you reach retirement age. Instead of your employer putting aside money to pay retired employees, now you’re responsible for setting aside that money yourself, with a little extra contribution from your company.
Employers prefer the 401K program because they invest a little extra money into you initially, but then they don’t have to pay out a pension for the rest of a former employee’s life. So they save money in the long run. Meanwhile, your retirement depends on you being fiscally responsible early in your career instead of expecting a fixed income to cover you later in life.
All right, now I’m convinced you’re just a burner account for my wife. You’re still arguing semantics, distracting with irrelevant information, and are willingly misunderstanding instead of contributing to the actual conversation. Looks like you care more about arguing than having an actual productive discussion, so it’s not really worth my time to try and rehash this in even simpler terms for you.
But I will condede, I meant 90 days, not 30. That was an honest slip of the fingers.
EDIT: Fine, because it’s bothering me how poorly you’re following this discussion, here’s an actual response:
Congress in Iraq 2003 authorized before, rather than after. […]
Irrelevant. My point was that the president can act on his own. Period. That was the whole discussion, from the very start. Congress is not needed. Just because Congress has been consulted with, and approved further action before the president gave the order, doesn’t mean he can’t do it.
You’re trying to say the president can’t send troops overseas into enemy territory without approval from Congress and that is simply wrong. You’ve been quoting the War Powers Act in every thread here, and even corrected me on the 90 days rule, yet you still act like the president’s hands are tied without Congress signing off on everything he does. That’s literally the point of the 90 day rule!
The name of the medal was official. I’m not going to re-litigate the entire subject, but if your point is that there was an aversion to using the word “war” in public, that simply wasn’t so. […]
Okay, let me simplify this for you, since you’re struggling with reading comprehension. Publicly, it was called the Iraq War. Because that’s the term the civilian population latched onto and we couldn’t shake that perception. Same with Vietnam War, Korean War, Gulf War, etc. Not official wars, but the public named them and we didn’t argue semantics with news agencies, lest it ruin our credibility. (Like arguing with trolls about semantics online. Hmm…) We do not have an aversion to using “war” publicly. We actually prefer to use that word publicly.
In an official capacity though (read: behind-the-scenes military documentation/records/discussion/etc.), it’s always been the Iraq Campaign. We do not call it a war because Congress never declared war. It’s literally as simple as that. Our written military history will officially have it documented as a military campaign and nothing more. The medal awarded for participation in the Iraq War is literally called the Iraq Campaign Medal.
The medal you’re referring to in your comment is the Global War on Terrorism medal. Not related to the Iraq War, or any war in particular. It’s a stupid declaration by a former president who wanted to make a statement about standing up to the 9/11 attacks, and award any service member who takes part in this so-called “War on Terror.”
And again, we use the word “war” publicly, so there’s no reason we can’t have it on that particular medal. It’s not referencing a specific military campaign, so it can be named the Global War on Terrorism medal. Refer to the “War on Drugs” comment in my last reply.
I usually don’t have to deep dive into the specifics about these things with civilians
Perhaps an assumption?
An assumption about what? You obviously didn’t serve in the military, or else you would know all this and I wouldn’t have to spell this out multiple times for you. So yes, I’m assuming you’re just a civilian who read a few articles and are now struggling to follow actual information from someone who experienced it first-hand through the military, because it didn’t align with whatever comprehension you took away from the subject.
I personally see “bloodline” as a specific, direct line of descendants through a certain genetic-based family, title, position, etc. Whereas a family tree is literally everybody you’re related to, directly or not.
EDIT: As an example, I have an uncle on my mom’s side of the family. He’s not genetically related to me; he married into our family. He also brought a daughter from a previous marriage, so she’s legally my cousin, but we’re not genetically related at all. They married into my bloodline, but they aren’tof my bloodline, if that makes sense. They’re part of my family tree.